Launched Crew Dragon 3, it is on its way to the Space Station

By Alessandro Pellegrino

After a series of delays, Elon Musk’s private company SpaceX has taken four astronauts into orbit for the International Space Station on the “Crew-3” mission.

NASA astronauts Raja Chari, Kayla Barron and Tom Marshburn and the German Matthias Maurer, of the European Space Agency (ESA), who form the crew of the Crew-3 mission, departed aboard the Crew Dragon Endurance capsule, launched by a Falcon 9 rocket at 3:03 pm from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida.

The spacecraft will dock at the ISS at 1.10pm on 11 November. The flight was postponed from October 31, first due to weather conditions, then due to a “medical problem” that affected one of the crew members. NASA did not say who it was but did report it was unrelated to Covid.